This Got Me Going This Morning

Searching for a distraction from the layoff rumors and the site of our facilities person carrying a couple dozen rolls of packing tape through the hallway, I came across this article this morning that really got me going.

Does this really make ANY sense at all? This is Keynesian economics on steroids! They've taken a BAD idea and AMPLIFIED it out to a trillion dollars on top of the 1.2 trillion we've already been spending. Is there anyone with an ounce of sanity here? This is exactly what FDR tried back in the thirties and it FAILED to bring this country out of a depression. People need to remember it wasn't the New Deal that brought the US back to prosperity, it was WWII.

Look at the 70s, we were in a horrible economic situation, stagflation was crippling us and nobody could really see there way out of it. The attitude was that we were just going to have to deal with it and they came up with the "misery index" to measure the situation in the US. It was HORRIBLE! What was the answer?

Less government. Lower tax rates. To quote a great man and one of our greatest presidents (IMO) "in this present crisis, government is not the solution to the problem; government IS the problem." It is not 'de-regulation' of the financial markets that caused this mess, it was GOVERNMENT getting involved in the mortgage business. It was politicians influencing these pseudo government entities (Fannie and Freddie) that brought on the melt down. When government expands it sucks money out of the private sector. All this deficit spending is gobbling up money. Oh my goodness! How many times do we need to learn the same lessons before we FINALLY get them!

Look at the UK when Thatcher took over. The government in the UK owned most of the domestic auto industry, coal industry, and oil industry. The public sector (read GOVERNMENT) was HUGE and each of these industries were individually being crushed by unions and a global recession. Thatcher started by pushing to sell these things off. She struggled for years to break the backs of corrupt unions that were trying to do so much for their people that they were destroying the companies and the government that owned the companies. Sound anything like the UAW?

The words of the Gipper ring true today. The biggest mistakes that Pres Bush made were all fiscal mistakes. Instead of correcting those, Pres Obama seems to be of the mind that we can throw good money after bad and in so doing will make the whole situation worse.

Talk to any financial planner. Tell them that you want to turn your economic situation around and get out of debt. You will not be able to find a single (successful) planner that will say, the first thing you need to do is increase your debt by an amount equal to one third of your annual budget. Any shrewd economic advisor will say: cut spending, consolidate or eliminate debt, and maximize your income. In the case of the government, historical record will show you the way to do that is to shrink the size of the government, cut any and all excess spending, and lower the tax rates across the board. That puts the most money possible into the private sector, which is the ONLY sector that has the ability to grow the economy. Period.